So, what the hell is a Wetherby? It's
just the name of a nondescript and middle class English town which
provides the backdrop for this mysterious whydunit. (It's a suicide,
so we already know WHOdunit.)

An unfulfilled middle aged schoolmarm hosts a small dinner party one
evening. As the guests arrive, a stranger appears at the door, says
he is John Morgan, and walks in to the dinner. Everyone present
assumes that somebody else invited a kind invitation to this
lost soul, so they politely set an extra place for him. It turns out
that he has simply invited himself.

John Morgan returns to the teacher's house the next morning, makes a
little small talk, pulls a gun from his pocket, sticks it in his
mouth, and calmly shoots himself.

And there is our whydunit premise. Why was John Morgan at that
party? Why did he commit suicide? Why did he choose the teacher's
home to make his farewell statement? The last question is especially
intriguing to the police, because a suicide among strangers is
totally uncharacteristic. Typically a suicide happens alone, or as a
dramatic statement made in front of someone for a purpose, but not
among random people. The police inspector tries to assemble the
pieces of the puzzle, with only limited success, but we in the
audience get a significant amount of additional insight when we see
incidents from John Morgan's past, from the teacher's past, and from
additional moments during the evening of the dinner party.

The solution to the puzzle is never really explicit, but the script
maintains an appropriate feeling of ubiquitous portent throughout
the story by the unspoken parts of the secret. The story thus stands
apart from the type of mystery which functions logically and
deductively. It is inductive, and oblique. It offers not solutions,
but hints, suggestions, or working hypotheses. This technique is
quite an intelligent way to present the unraveling, as if Harold
Pinter had decided to take his elegant dialogue and sense of
foreboding away from psychological dramas about the rich and write
instead a mystery story about the educated middle class. On the
other hand, not everyone watches movies to see displays of
intelligence, suggestion, and subtlety. If you want to see a true
mystery story, you will really not care for this much at all. You
will probably sit quietly during the closing credits and think, "Am
I supposed to understand why it happened? I'm not sure that I do,
even after all that exposition."

The dialogue is smart and it is delivered by a first-rate and
classically trained cast, headed by Ian Holm, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and
Vanessa Redgrave. Vanessa's look-alike daughter, Joely, plays her mother's
character in flashback scenes. The story had its origin on the London stage, not
in a play written by Harold Pinter but one from David Hare, who adapted his own
play into this screenplay and also directed the film, constructing it carefully
to maintain a certain portentous tone. If you enjoy Pinter's plays, or other
works which rely on the careful maintenance of tone to evoke a calculated
emotional response from the audience, you'll find this to be a good example of
the type. Roger Ebert felt it was worth four stars.

I myself don't especially enjoy watching Pinteresque plays. I
don't know how much of Pinter's (or Hare's) dialogue is meant to represent
realistic characterization and how much is stagy artifice, but I've always
thought this sort of dialogue to be merely a component of the contrivance
necessary to evoke a certain audience response. It always sounds like
speechifying to me. Of course, I may be wrong about whether these characters are
realistic. The fact that I don't know any people who talk or think like these
people doesn't obviate the possibility that these portrayals do fairly represent
a certain side of British life of which I am unaware. If that is so, I'm glad I
don't have to spend any time there. I didn't even want to spend the very little
time encompassed by this movie. I found Wetherby very tough going -
tedious, talky, and utterly devoid of warmth. Its putative subtlety could also
be described as a lack of clarity and catharsis. Roger Ebert may be correct in
his assessment that this is a superior film, but frankly the vast majority of
you would top off a viewing by questioning how anyone could possibly like this.
My own reaction to the film involved no small measure of admiration, but not one
scintilla of enjoyment.

Tuna's comments in
yellow:

Wetherby sports a stellar cast
including Vanessa Redgrave and Judy Dench. The plot is simple enough. A
stranger invites himself to a small dinner party at the home of spinster
teacher Redgrave. The next day, he visits her, and blows his brains all
over her wall. The rest of the film examines the question, "Why did he
do it?" An assortment of characters all wonder why he did it, including
Redgrave's lifelong friend (Dench), the friend's husband, a police
investigator, and a rather strange female acquaintance of the deceased .

The question didn't struck me as a particularly interesting one to begin
with, especially as I didn't know the character, but I didn't feel like
I was any closer to an answer by the time the film ended. So, if the
film didn't answer the question, "Why did he do it?", what question did
the film answer? It wasn't until I started thinking about how on earth
to review this that I found the real question, and point of the film.
Either of two questions will get you there.

Why did these characters want to
know why he did it?

Why were these characters included
in the story?

that most of us are profoundly unhappy
just under the surface. At least in my case, that is a totally false
assumption.

NUDITY REPORT

Suzanna Hamilton is seen in a thin white top
and panties. There is no actual nudity, but her dark nipples/areolae
are constantly visible through the thin shirt.

The answer is the same in both cases.
All of them are living unhappy lives, although they appear outwardly
content with life. So the real question of the film isn't "Why did he do
it?" but rather, "Why don't we do it?" Unfortunately, the film doesn't
really answer that either. What is the value in this? Possibly, the film
makers are asking us to look inside ourselves, and decide if we are or
aren't happy, and figure out what keeps us going.

I feel a little better now that I see a reason for the film to
exist, and it is now clear why I didn't relate to it at all. The
basic assumption is

The
Critics Vote ...

Roger Ebert 4/4

Judy Dench was nominated
for a BAFTA, as she has been for just about every movie.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.

Based on this description, Scoop says, "This is a C+ if you
like psychological character studies and might enjoy one filled
with a sense of mystery, but it's a D if you are hoping
for a genuine mystery genre film. Most people will be baffled by the fact that
others seem to like it. Tuna says, "The
film is technically competent, but, at least for me, doesn't
justify the expenditure of time. C-."